The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

Friday, June 10, 2016

Likely Democratic nominee admits some foreign donations to Clinton foundation went unreported during her tenure as Sec. of State.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted on Wednesday that
some foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation made during her tenure
as Secretary of State were not disclosed to the State Department.

Clinton’s admission is the first acknowledgement by the likely
Democratic nominee that the foundation, chaired by her husband, former
president Bill Clinton, received money from foreign sources off the
books.

Speaking on CNN, the former First Lady responded to accusations by
GOP presumptive nominee Donald Trump that Clinton had used her position
in the State Department to provide political favors to foreign interest
in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation.

“[T]he Russians, the Saudis, and the Chinese all gave money to Bill
and Hillary and got favorable treatment in return,” Trump said on
Tuesday.

Clinton claimed “overwhelming disclosure” saying that the bulk of
donations were reported to the State Department during her tenure.

When pressed by CNN host Anderson Cooper, who noted examples of the
foundation’s lack of transparency, Clinton admitted that in “one or two
instances” some donations “slipped through the cracks”.

Citing donations including a large sum received from Algeria, Cooper noted the foundation’s failure to disclose donations.

“The foundation has obviously raised huge sums of money for worthy
causes. It's always not been transparent, though. Tens of millions of
dollars have come from a Canadian partnership whose donors can remain
secret. There was a large donation from Algeria that wasn't submitted to
State Department for approval. If you're president, will your husband
divest himself of any association with the foundation?”

“We had absolutely, overwhelming disclosure,” Clinton responded.
“Were there one or two instances that slipped through the cracks? Yes.
But was the overwhelming amount of anything that anybody gave the
foundation disclosed? Absolutely. And I'm proud of the foundation. I'm
proud of the work it has done”.

The Clinton Foundation, which engages in humanitarian work, has been
criticized for what some have described as a lack of transparency.
Critics have accused Clinton of using the foundation to support staff
members who later formed the core of her presidential campaign.David RosenbergSource: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/213493#.V1mcdeSzdds Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Even as images of the carnage at Sarona Market played out on screen, after four people were murdered in a terror attack by two Arab gunmen, two news anchors appeared to compete in exhibiting hostility towards Israel.

One of the two MSNBC presenters has form: Ayman Mohyeldin was caught lying last year after attempting to portray a knife-wielding terrorist as an unarmed man shot by Israeli police simply for cutting in line at a checkpoint.

In his latest reportage, first flagged by the Honest Reporting media watchdog, Mohyeldin repeatedly suggested that the fact that Israel has a right-wing government and was enacting security measures to prevent attacks, somehow justified attacks on Israeli civilians.

His colleague Martin Fletcher joined in the anti-Israel tirade, inexplicably emphasizing Israel's "extreme right-wing" in a report concerning a brutal attack by Palestinian terrorists against Israelis.

As noted by Honest Reporting, the coverage was all the more astonishing in that while it inexplicably focused on supposed Israeli "extremism", nothing was mentioned vis-a-vis the blatant extremism and support for such attacks against civilians by Palestinians - including open celebrations on the streets of Gaza, eastern Jerusalem and Palestinian Authority-ruled cities.Ari SofferSource: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/213495#.V1l7BuSzdds Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The war of the generals makes the media war and its latest French donor battle, pale in comparison.

Israelis are great soldiers out of necessity, not because
of militarism. The former chief of staff, the archaeologist Yigal Yadin,
said that “in Israel a civilian is a soldier with eleven months
leave.”

Some have called Israel “the modern Sparta.” Others, less benign, “the small Middle East Prussia.”

Because
of its geographical location and the genocidal intentions of its foes,
Israel can not afford a war of position and attrition, it has to win
right away. It must have an army that goes hand in hand with the
political leadership.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed
Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman, a civilian, in place of Moshe
"Bogie" Yaalon in“the latest act of the war between Netanyahu and the
military leaders and intelligence” according to Ronen Bergman, writing
in the NYT.

The latest chapter in this war began after
Elor Azaria, an Israeli sergeant, shot and killed a wounded Palestinian
terrorist in Hevron. The army condemned the killing and the soldier,
while Netanyahu called Azaria’s father to offer his moral support. The
Israeli generals read the phone call as a challenge to their authority.
The deputy chief of staff, General Yair Golan, choose one of the most
sensitive periods on Israel’s calendar, Holocaust Memorial Day, to
counterattack, suggesting a similarity between Israel and Germany in the
‘30s. Then minister of defense Moshe Yaalon, a former army chief of
staff, defended the general. Haaretz already wonders if “Yaalon will be the new Ariel Sharon”.

In
Netanyahu's way of looking at it, the army élite is part of the
"hegemonic bloc", which he has defeated many times. In the run-up to the
1999 elections, a large group of retired generals gathered around the
figure of Ehud Barak to orchestrate what will go down in history as the
“democratic putsch” against Netanyahu, "guilty" of having ordered the
generals to “change the disk” on the Palestinian Arabs (a few days ago
Ehud Barak re-appeared on television to warn Israel of “fascism”).

In
1997 the main contender against Netanyahu for the Likud leadership was a
military man, Yitzhak Mordechai, and Bibi was also challenged by his
former chief of staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, who later gave the victory to
Barak by founding a small centrist party that stole votes
from Netanyahu. Another former chief of staff of the Israeli army, Dan
Halutz, has joined the opposition party Kadima, while General Amram
Mitzna was in contention for the Labour leadership, after defining
Netanyahu “dangerous for Israel”.

Today the Left dreams that two former generals, Gabi Ashkenazi and Benny Gantz, will politically unseat Netanyahu.

There’s
even a law, made expressly for the generals and promoted by the Left,
to reduce from three years to six months the period of leave that an IDF
officer must take before getting into politics.

And while
Netanyahu flew to Washington to denounce the nuclear deal between the US
and Iran, a group called “Commanders for the security of Israel” made
up of 180 retired generals and former officials, including three former
heads of Mossad, denounced the Prime Minister. “It is the worst manager
I’ve ever had”, said the late Meir Dagan, the former director of the
Mossad, of Netanyahu. Dagan openly campaigned against the Prime
Minister. Later, it turned out that he was secretly in cahoots with the
US government to prevent Israel from attacking Iran.

Netanyahu is
in conflict with the generals on many issues: the proposals to
reduce restrictive conditions for Palestinian Arabs (the prime minister
is against) to allegations that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud
Abbas incites terrorism (the Shin Bet says he helps to fight it) and
Netanyahu’s proposal to expel the families of terrorists (the secret
service opposed the measure).

Both the Shin Bet and the Mossad
also opposed the military campaign against Hamas in Gaza in 2014. Yuval
Diskin, the former head of the security services, is today one of the
most eloquent opponents of Netanyahu. Diskin said that Netanyahu
represents “a threat to the country”. There is bad blood between the
heads of the Shin Bet and Netanyahu ever since the assassination of
Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. Carmi Gillon, who commanded the services at the
time and failed to protect Rabin, declared that Netanyahu was indirectly
responsible for the killing of the Prime Minister.

Meir Dagan
orchestrated one of the most impressive public campaigns on how to
disarm Tehran. On a day sometime in 2010, Netanyahu, together with
Minister of Defense Ehud Barak, ordered the army level “P +”: meaning
"get ready" to attack the Iranian nuclear plants. A leak from the office
of members of the government would later indicate that the attack was
foiled by the opposition of the security chiefs, including Diskin. Barak
confirmed the report on Israeli television: “At the moment of truth,
the answer was that they could not do it” chanted Barak. The army and
the secret services never forgave Netanyahu who made them look like
wimps.

The last six of the secret service chiefs are also all
politically engaged against Netanyahu. Beginning with Yaakov Peri, who
commanded the Shin Bet from 1988 to 1995 (now Peri is in the Yair Lapid
Party).

For the Obama administration, which has never made any
secret of hating Netanyahu, the security echelon in Israel is an
alternative government. This is the lesson to be drawn from an article
published in Foreign Affairs by David Makovsky, a member of the
negotiating team of the Secretary of State John Kerry during his failed
peace process. Makovsky defined the IDF as “the guardian of democratic
values” ​​and “the Israeli-Palestinian arena stabilizer”.

In June
1967, then-Prime Minister Levi Eshkol expected US support for what would
become “the Six Day War” while the Arab armies were massing at the
borders of Israel, and the top IDF brass said that going to war was less
dangerous than not going. While the country was dying in an unnerving
wait, then Major General Ariel Sharon tried to persuade his superior
Yitzhak Rabin to stage a coup. But in those days the roles were
reversed: the politicians were the doves and the generals were the
hawks; today the generals seem to be diehard pacifists. Also reversed
was the sentiment of the people: then, the generals were considered
untouchable white knights; today they are viewed with suspicion, accused
of disloyalty to their elected prime minister and of having clear
political aims.

The generals' policy of unilateral withdrawal and
dialogue with a gun at Israel's head has proven to be a recipe for
disaster for the Jewish State. Giulio MeottiSource: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/19000#.V1lp6uSzddt Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Public anger is also being fueled by the growing number of diktats
issued by the unelected officials running the Brussels-based European
Commission, the powerful administrative arm of the bloc, which has been
relentless in its usurpation of sovereignty from the 28 nation states
that comprise the European Union.

Public anger is also being fueled by the growing number of diktats issued by the unelected officials running the Brussels-based European Commission, the powerful administrative arm of the bloc, which has been relentless in its usurpation of sovereignty from the 28 nation states that comprise the European Union.

Although the survey does not explicitly say so, the findings almost certainly reflect growing anger at the anti-democratic nature of the EU and its never-ending power grabs.

On May 31, the EU, in partnership with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft, unveiled a "code of conduct" to combat the spread of "illegal hate speech" online. Critics say the EU's definition of "hate speech" is so vague that it could include virtually anything deemed politically incorrect by European authorities, including criticism of mass migration, Islam or even the EU itself.

On April 20, the European Political Strategy Centre, an in-house EU think tank that reports directly to Juncker, proposed that the European Union establish its own central intelligence agency, which would answer only to unelected bureaucrats.

Public opposition to the European Union is growing in all key member states, according to a new survey of voters in ten EU countries.

Public disaffection with the EU is being fueled by the bloc's mishandling of the refugee and debt crises, according to the survey, which interviewed voters in Britain, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Sweden.

Public anger is also being fueled by the growing number of diktats issued by the unelected officials running the Brussels-based European Commission, the powerful administrative arm of the bloc, which has been relentless in its usurpation of sovereignty from the 28 nation states that comprise the European Union.

The 17-page report, "Euroskepticism Beyond Brexit," was published by the Pew Research Center on June 7, just two weeks before the June 23 referendum on whether Britain will become the first country to leave the European Union (Brexit blends the words Britain and exit).

The following are excerpts:

Much of the disaffection with the EU among Europeans can be attributed to Brussels' handling of the refugee issue. In every country surveyed, overwhelming majorities disapprove of how Brussels has dealt with the crisis. This includes 94% of Greeks, 88% of Swedes and 77% of Italians. In Hungary and Poland, disapproval of how the refugee crisis has been managed stands at 72% and 71%, respectively. In France, 70% disapprove; in Germany the figure is 67%. The strongest approval of EU management of the refugee crisis is in the Netherlands, but that backing is a tepid 31%.

The EU's handling of economic issues is another huge source of disaffection with Brussels. About nine-in-ten Greeks (92%) disapprove of how the EU has dealt with the ongoing economic crisis. Roughly two-thirds of the Italians (68%), French (66%) and Spanish (65%) similarly disapprove. (France and Spain are the two nations where the favorability of the EU has recently experienced the largest decline.) Majorities in Sweden (59%) and the UK (55%) also disapprove of the EU's job in dealing with economic challenges. The strongest approval of Brussels' economic efforts is in Poland and Germany (both 47%).

Nearly two-thirds (65%) of Britons say they want the EU to return certain powers to national governments. This Euroskepticism is not limited to Britain. In Greece, 68% of those surveyed want some EU powers devolved to the national government, followed by Sweden (47%); the Netherlands (44%) and Germany (43%).

A median of 42% of Europeans across the ten countries surveyed say they want to reclaim some powers from Brussels, while just 19% favor greater centralization (27% prefer the status quo).

Conversely, there is little enthusiasm for transferring more power to Brussels. Only 6% of Britons, 8% of Greeks and 13% of Swedes favor more power for the EU. The strongest backing for an ever closer Europe is only 34%, in France. In most countries, a quarter or more of the public prefers to keep the current division of power.

Three-quarters of Britons who disapprove of the EU's handling of economic problems and 71% of those who have an unfavorable view of the bloc's handling of the refugee crisis believe that Brussels should return powers to national governments.

The strongest backers of the EU are the Poles (72%) and the Hungarians (61%). In many other nations, support is tepid. Just 27% of the Greeks, 38% of the French (down from 69% in 2004) and 47% of the Spanish (down from 80% in 2007) have a favorable opinion of the EU. Notably, 44% of the British view the EU favorably, including 53% of the Scottish.

EU favorability is down in five of the six nations surveyed in both 2015 and 2016. There has been a double-digit drop in France (down 17 percentage points) and Spain (16 points), and single-digit declines in Germany (8 points), the United Kingdom (7 points) and Italy (6 points).

Young people — those ages 18 to 34 — are more favorable toward the European Union than people 50 and older in six of the 10 nations surveyed. The generation gap is most pronounced in France — 25 percentage points — with 56% of young people but only 31% of older people having a positive opinion of the EU. There are similar generation gaps of 19 points in the UK, 16 points in the Netherlands, 14 points in Poland and Germany, and 13 points in Greece. It remains unclear why young Europeans are so favorable to the EU, where youth unemployment is near 50% in some EU countries.

There is overwhelming sentiment across Europe that Brexit would be a bad thing for the European Union: 89% in Sweden, 75% in the Netherlands and 74% in Germany say the British leaving would not be good for the EU. France is the only country where more than a quarter (32%) of the public says it would be positive for the EU if the UK departed.

Although the survey does not explicitly say so, the findings almost certainly reflect growing anger at the anti-democratic nature of the EU and its never-ending power grabs.

On May 31, the European Union, in partnership with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft, unveiled a "code of conduct" to combat the spread of "illegal hate speech" online in Europe. Critics say the initiative amounts to an assault on free speech in Europe because the EU's definition of "hate speech" and "incitement to violence" is so vague that it could include virtually anything deemed politically incorrect by European authorities, including criticism of mass migration, Islam or even the European Union itself.

On May 24, the unelected president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, vowed to use sanctions to isolate far-right or populist governments that are swept into office on the wave of popular anger against migration. Under powers granted to the European Commission in 2014, Juncker can trigger a "rule of law alert" for countries that depart from "the common constitutional traditions of all member states." Rather than accepting the will of the people at the voting booth, Juncker can impose sanctions to address "systemic deficiencies" in EU member states.

On May 4, Juncker warned that EU countries that failed to "show solidarity" by refusing take in migrants would face a fine of €250,000 ($285,000) per migrant.

On April 20, the European Political Strategy Centre, an in-house EU think tank that reports directly to Juncker, proposed that the European Union establish its own central intelligence agency, which would answer only to unelected bureaucrats. According to the plan, the 28 EU member states would have a "legally binding duty to share information."

The British Minister of State for the Armed Forces, Penny Mordaunt, responded:

"These matters are supposed to be, and must be the competence of member states. Intelligence sharing can only be done on a bilateral basis. This latest EU integration project not only shows how little the EU cares for the sovereignty of nation states, but also how little it understands the business of counter-terrorism."

On December 15, 2015, the European Commission unveiled plans for a new European Border and Coast Guard force that can intervene anywhere in the EU, even without the host country's consent.

On March 8, 2015, Juncker said that the EU needed its own military in order to restore the bloc's standing around the world: "Europe's image has suffered dramatically and also in terms of foreign policy, we don't seem to be taken entirely seriously."

In a recent interview with Le Monde, Juncker said that if Britons voted to leave the EU, they would be treated as "deserters":

"I am sure the deserters will not be welcomed with open arms. If the British should say 'No' — which I hope they do not — then life in the EU will not go on as before. The United Kingdom will be regarded as a third country and will have its fur stroked the wrong way (caresser dans le sens du poil). If the British leave Europe, people will have to face the consequences. It is not a threat but our relations will no longer be what they are today."

In an interview with the Telegraph, Giles Merritt, director of the Friends of Europe think tank in Brussels, summed it up this way:

"The EU policy elites are in panic. If the British vote to leave the shock will be so ghastly that they will finally wake up and realize that they can no longer ignore demands for democratic reform. They may have to dissolve the EU as it is and try to reinvent it, both in order to bring the Brits back and because they fear that the whole political order will be swept away unless they do."

Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter. His first book, Global Fire, will be out in 2016.

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8224/european-union-support Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Why the terrorist group is ramping up its attacks on soft targets.

Just a year ago, ISIS (aka ISIL, aka Daesh) was on the offensive. In Iraq, the group had solidified its hold over Al-Anbar province by securing the predominantly Sunni city of Ramadi and was threatening Baghdad. Some twenty-thousand Iraqi soldiers fled in the face of just 3,000 ISIS fighters. In Syria, ISIS had captured the ancient city of Palmyra, a UNESCO heritage site and also secured nearby gas fields. Like their Iraqi kinsmen, the Syrian army was in full retreat. It seemed that no Arab army was capable of confronting the Islamic State.The situation today is markedly different. In Anbar province, the Iraqi army backed by various Shiite militias is pressing its assault against the ISIS-held city of Fallujah, highlighting the sectarian nature of the fighting. In eastern Syria, Syrian forces backed by Russian airpower, have retaken Palmyra and are now gearing up for an offensive against the ISIS stronghold Al-Raqqah, considered to be the Islamist group’s capital.Meanwhile, Kurdish Peshmerga troops backed by U.S. Special Forces continue to score victories against ISIS and coalition aircraft led by the U.S. have been relentlessly pummeling ISIS targets. The Islamic State is being squeezed from all sides and its future is uncertain. So desperate is its predicament that the group has reportedly been murdering many of its own members on suspicion of spying for “infidel” forces.But it would be a grave mistake to write ISIS off just yet. In fact, as the Islamic State continues to lose ground and becomes more desperate, we can expect concerted efforts by the group to unleash terror attacks on soft targets throughout Europe and the United States, similar to the Paris and San Bernardino attacks that claimed the lives of 130 and 14 people respectively. Though achieving tactically little, these acts of terror sow fear, disrupt daily normal life, draw Jihadist recruits and most importantly, make the group relevant.Recent reversals experienced by the Islamic State have not dulled their hatred of the West and thirst for gore. In April, the group published a 39-page list of thousands of individuals, along with their personal information, and announced that they were to be targeted for assassination. The hit list was published on an ISIS-affiliated Twitter account but the account was shut down by Twitter soon after.Authorities are still investigating how such sensitive personal information, containing names and addresses, ended up in the hands of one of the world’s most brutal terrorist organizations but the disturbing development underscores the lengths to which ISIS will go to strike terror. It also underscores the need to carefully monitor social media, a tool terrorists have used effectively in the past to disseminate Jihadist propaganda.In addition, the breach highlights the need for more effective cyber security. The incident should serve as a warning to agencies maintaining sensitive databases to review their security protocols and mechanisms by which they safeguard their data.Most importantly, the United States needs to rapidly address the decrepit state of its porous borders. Western Europe has thus far been the focal point of Jihadist attacks principally due to two factors – the existence of a high concentration of Muslims, many of whom are radicalized and a pathetic lack of border controls. The current Muslim migrant influx, which includes an extraordinarily high percentage of young males, has only added to the problem. In the United States, the situation is not as acute but still poses a credible threat that mandates immediate remedial action.President Obama has promised that those “refugees” allowed to enter the U.S. will be thoroughly vetted but that claim rings hollow in light of the San Bernardino experience. Tashfeen Malik, Seyd Farook’s partner in crime and Pakistani Jihadi bride, entered the U.S. on a K-1 (fiancée) visa and underwent two separate screenings by Homeland Security and the State Department before being granted a visa and underwent a third before obtaining her green card. But Malik had expressed pro-terrorist, anti-American rants on social media and these went unnoticed by immigration and Homeland Security officials despite the so-called "rigorous vetting process."In addition, there have been repeated cases of Syrian “refugees” turning up on the Mexican border. In one case, five Syrians trying to make their way to the U.S. were detained in Honduras and had in their possession stolen Greek passports. Despite these disturbing developments, the Democratic presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton has stated that she would allow some 65,000 Syrian “refugees” to enter the United States. At least two members of the Islamic terrorist cell that carried out the bloody Paris attacks gained access by posing as Syrian refugees.The Islamic State and other global Jihadist groups consider the United States their number one enemy and will spare no effort to harm Americans. The published list of NJ law enforcement officials is the latest in series of nefarious attempts by the group to harm U.S. citizens. As ISIS becomes more desperate due to its recent battlefield misfortunes, it will attempt to strike out at the U.S. making it incumbent upon policy makers to ensure that securing the borders becomes a national priority. Unfortunately, the Democratic leadership has utterly failed to appreciate the clear and present danger and is moving in the opposite direction.

Ari Lieberman is an attorney and former prosecutor who has authored numerous articles and publications on matters concerning the Middle East and is considered an authority on geo-political and military developments affecting the region.Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/263139/isis-produces-kill-list-border-remains-open-ari-lieberman Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

State Department says Israel's response to Tel Aviv attack should take innocent Palestinians into consideration.

Despite condemning Wednesday terrorist shooting attack
in the Sarona Market in Tel Aviv, the State Department on Thursday said
that Israel's response to the attack should be designed in a way that
does not punish innocent Palestinians.

"We understand the Israeli government's desire to protect its
citizens ... and we strongly support that right, but we would hope that
any measures it takes are designed to also take into consideration the
impact on Palestinian citizens that are trying to go about their daily
lives," State Department spokesman Mark Toner told a news briefing,
according to the Reuters news agency.

Israel also rescinded some 83,000 entry permits given to Arabs from
Judea and Samaria for Ramadan. Goodwill gestures to Gaza Arabs,
including travel permits to Jerusalem to participate in Ramadan prayers
on the Temple Mount, were also rescinded.

On Wednesday night, hours after the attack, Toner issued a statement condemning it and referring to it as “cowardly”.

“The United States condemns today’s horrific terrorist attack in Tel
Aviv in the strongest possible terms. We extend our deepest condolences
to the families of those killed and our hopes for a quick recovery for
those wounded,” said Toner.

“These cowardly attacks against innocent civilians can never be
justified. We are in touch with Israeli authorities to express our
support and concern,” he added.Ben ArielSource: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/213518#.V1ox96Kzdds Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Fallujah is the picture of all that is wrong in the West's thinking on the Middle East.

At this very moment, the Iraqi government is in the midst of a fierce
offensive aimed at retaking the city of Fallujah and wresting it from
the hands of ISIS. This military campaign was meticulously planned for
several months with the help of American and Iranian advisors and
representatives of the "Popular Forces" – a group of Shiite militias
whose activities are indistinguishable from those of ISIS because they,
too, mercilessly butcher, burn and eliminate their enemies, the only
difference being that their enemies are Sunni rather than Shiite.

Several
groups with varying goals and diametrically opposed views are
participating in the battle for Fallujah, but it is clear that the
enmity between Sunni and Shiite Muslims is at the core of what is
happening. The city's residents and the ISIS fighters holed up in the
city are Sunni, while the government, militias, "Popular Forces" and
Iranians targeting them are Shiite.

It is strange to see
Shiite forces fighting the Sunni ISIS, in effect sacrificing their lives
in order to save the city's Sunni residents, whom they view as
infidels, from ISIS' clutches. That explains their excessive use of
explosives, including rockets, on the city and its residents. The
Shiites couldn't care less what happens to civilians whom they consider
to be just as bad as ISIS.

Government forces and Shiite
militias are being helped by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, fighting
under the direct command of Kassem Suleimani, head of the Quds Force,
aided by US-led coalition air power. Iran's goal is clearly the
elimination of any Sunni presence in Fallujah, including both ISIS and
the city's residents. Worst of all is the cooperation between the
Western coalition members and Iran in order to destroy a city that, as
of last week, was home to an estimated 45,000 Iraqi civilians.

The
residents of Fallujah know exactly what awaits them and are therefore
fleeing the city en masse. Many have drowned while trying to cross the
Euphrates River. Those who made it live in fear of government forces as
well as the Shiite militias whose major and unbridled activity is
hunting down any and all Sunnis in order to do to them what the ISIS
Jihadists have been doing to the Shiites.

The Iraqi regime
told residents to leave the city, since it was about to be razed to the
ground, that being the only way the government feels it can get rid of
the ISIS Jihadists hiding in underground tunnels and basements.
Unfortunately, the government and the militias suspect that Jihadists
will take advantage of the fleeing citizens and join them, and this
suspicion has succeeded in turning all the desperately fleeing residents
into suspected ISIS terrorists.

Regime forces and
militias have so far arrested over 1000 citizens in towns near Fallujah,
tortured and mistreated them, beheading – at least according to those
who claim to have been there – youngsters whom they suspected of being
ISIS fighters.

Fallujah's residents are convinced that the
war is not being fought just to root out ISIS, but is meant to make sure
there is no Sunni presence whatsoever left in the city. Their gut
feeling is that the proclamations that the war is against ISIS serve as a
fig leaf that hides the real intentions of the Iranians, the militias
and the regime.

Fallujah
is in the eastern part of the Al Anbar region populated by a few
Bedouin tribes, themselves Sunnis who have become foes of the Shiite
militias fighting for Fallujah because of the way they treat the Sunni
residents in the area.

The Iraqi regime is not treating the
city's residents very well either. Several months ago it closed the
entrances to the city and refused to allow Saudi aid to reach the
beleaguered residents, claiming it might fall into the hands of ISIS.

The
Sunni tribes are willing to battle ISIS, but are vehemently opposed to
the Shiite militia involvement, because of their indiscriminate attacks
on Sunni Iraqi civilians in the region when they are supposed to be
concentrating their fire on Sunni ISIS Jihadists who hail from other
places on the globe.

The tribes demand international
guarantees that the state – run by Shiites – will not persecute them for
being Sunni after ISIS is destroyed. After all, fearsome as they are,
ISIS protects them from Shiite terror now.

They are faced
with the problem of international coalition forces headed by the US who
support the regime and therefore the militias as well, providing them
with air cover and bombing ISIS targets. It is obvious that the
international coalition forces are willfully ignoring the ethnic
cleansing government forces are carrying out against Iraq's Sunni
citizens.

Qassam Suleimani, commander of the Quds Force in
the Revolutionary Guards personally supervises the battles in which his
men take part, ignoring the UN Security Council decision that forbids
Iran from sending arms and fighters to anywhere outside its borders. It
is interesting that the West, so insistent on adherence to
international law, has no trouble ignoring Iran's defiance of
international decisions and is actually helping Iran battle the Iraqi
Sunnis.

Iraq declared a "secure passage" for the city's
population to allow it to flee safely, but the ordinary people do not
trust the army and are afraid that the passages will simply make them
easy prey for the militias and other soldiers. Tens of thousands of men,
women and children have elected to stay in Fallujah hoping that the
constant rocket barrages will put an end to the miilitants – unless the
Shiite militia's swords or the international coalition's bombers manage
to do so first. Some even flew white flags in front of their homes to
keep the militias from harming them, but that was a short lived effort
as the ISIS fighters, who still refuse to surrender to the regime and
the Shiite militias, attacked them instead.

Sadly, the ISIS
fighters are also preventing those citizens who wish to from fleeing so
that they can use them as human shields if that becomes necessary, just
as Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon did in the Second Lebanon War (2006)
and just as Hamas does whenever armed conflict erupts between Gaza and
Israel.

The general atmosphere of an ethnic war surrounds
the battle at Fallujah. In fact, the Syrian political analyst Bassem
J'ara has announced that Iran is more dangerous for Sunni Muslims than
Israel. He contends that the Iranians plan to drown the Islamic world in
rivers of blood in order to gain control of it in its entirety.

Other
analysts accuse the Sunni Islamic world of maintaining a thunderous
silence in the face of the butchery and ethnic cleansing that Iran and
its henchmen are carrying out in Fallujah, all this with the West's
blessing. Fallujah and the fate of its citizens will forever be a mark
of Cain on the forehead of Iraq. What is happening in the besieged city
is further proof of the uselessness of preserving Iraq's national
territory intact, as it results in continued fighting and massacres
between the ethnic and other groups that make up the country's
population.

It really is about time that the self-titled
"enlightened" world grasps that in the Middle East people remain loyal
to their traditional tribal framework, their ethnic group, religious or
sectarian one – and do not exchange that loyalty for an artificial,
newly acquired loyalty to a modern state. It is about time that the
world realizes that there is no Iraqi nation, Syrian nation, Libyan
nation, Sudanese nation, Yemenite nation – nor is there a Palestinian
nation – there are only tribes, ethnic, religious and sectarian groups.
When they are forced to live together, they battle one another.

The
only solution for Iraq is the one that suits all the failed Middle East
nationalist entities, the establishment of homogeneous emirates that
will live in internal, stable harmony and peace, cooperating with others
for the collective good.

It has been 100 years since the
Sykes-Picot agreements were signed and the time has come to admit that
they have failed. In their stead, let us try the only solution that
works in the Middle East: giving each group it own Emirate.
Translation by Rochel Sylvetsky, Arutz Sheva op-ed and Judaism editor.Dr. Mordechai KedarSource: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/19012#.V1m8LOSzdds Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

In an emergency session convened by the
Knesset's Education, Culture and Sports Committee Wednesday, MK Oded
Forer (Yisrael Beytenu) announced his plans to amend the anti-BDS law.
The proposal follows Israel Hayom's report last week that Israeli
academics had signed a letter encouraging the American Anthropological
Association, one of the world's largest academic organizations, to boycott Israel.

The proposal would allow the head of the
Council of Higher Education, who also serves as Israel's education
minister, to withhold funds amounting to the salary of a lecturer who
calls for a boycott on the State of Israel from academic institutions.

"Israel cannot support and budget lecturers
who call for a boycott against Israel. The boycott movement is an
anti-Semitic movement, and they [lecturers] cannot hide behind freedom
of expression," Forer said in the particularly heated session.

Forer's proposal garnered positive remarks
from Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, who said the proposal "is a
step in the right direction, but we need to discuss the exact wording.
We have set up a legal team that is looking into different ideas as to
how to fight against those who call for a boycott of Israel."

Fifteen MKs were present at the assembly. MK
Jamal Zahalka (Joint Arab List) had to be removed from the assembly
after repeatedly being called to order.

"It's amazing to discover that the vast
majority of those lecturers are active members of anti-Zionist political
organizations with enormous budgets that are funded by foreign
governments. This phenomenon must be stopped for the sake of the future
of Israeli academia," said Matan Peleg, CEO of the right-wing
organization Im Tirtzu.

The Knesset adjourned with a decision to hold
an extended discussion in two weeks. Acting Committee Chairman MK Merav
Ben-Ari (Kulanu) demanded action from a representative of the Council
for Higher Education.

"You cannot remain on the fence," she said.

Yair AltmanSource: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=34249 Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

”At first they told us, ‘We have no problem with you,
you are all our brothers and our sisters,’” the soft-spoken boy told
FoxNews.com from the Kurdish city of Duhok. “At first they told us they
wouldn’t hurt us.”

Ahmed bears the scars of beatings at the hands
of his ISIS captors, but did not allow them to break his will. (Special
to FoxNews.com)

A Yazidi boy who escaped an ISIS training camp and
made a daring trek to safety across the desert of northern Iraq told
FoxNews.com in an exclusive interview about his hellish, nine-month
ordeal under the black-clad terrorist army’s brutal grip.

Now safe in a Kurdish-run refugee camp, Ahmed Amin
Koro, 15, fears he will never again see his father again. He wonders how
the tight-knit religious minority can recover from the scars inflicted
by ISIS in the nearly two years since it stormed Mount Sinjar, the
ancestral home of 150,000 Yazidi.

“For a moment, if I feel happy, my neighbors are
not,” Ahmed told FoxNews.com in a Skype interview arranged by Kurdish
authorities. “We cannot be happy. “We think of others who are with ISIS.
It is a difficult life.”

Related Image

The exodus from Mount Sinjar in August, 2014, has left the Yazidi community scattered and devastated.
(Reuters)

Ahmed was just 13 when ISIS laid siege to Mount
Sinjar in early August of 2014. For days, the Yazidi, an ancient
religious minority wrongly regarded by many in the region as devil
worshippers, remained trapped in the towns that dot the mountainside,
such as Tel Qasab, Tel Banat, Qahtania and Mojamaa Al Jazeera, as the
world watched a humanitarian crisis unfold. Iraqi military choppers
airlifted some to safety, while others formed convoys to flee down the
only road leading off the mountain.

Ahmed’s father had desperately hoisted him and his
little brother into a relative’s vehicle and stayed behind, but moments
later, ISIS fighters manning a checkpoint on the road stopped the car.

Related Image

Ahmed spoke to FoxNews.com via Skype from the Kurdish-run refugee camp where he now lives.
(Special to FoxNews.com)

”At first they told us, ‘We have no problem with you,
you are all our brothers and our sisters,’” the soft-spoken boy told
FoxNews.com from the Kurdish city of Duhok. “At first they told us they
wouldn’t hurt us.”

While Ahmed and the other children were being whisked
50 miles east to the ISIS-controlled town of Tal Afar, the Islamist
army was moving up the mountain with savage precision, destroying entire
villages and burying countless men and women alive in a horrific scene
that galvanized international disgust. Witnesses would later give grimly
similar accounts of military-age men being summarily executed while
other adults were told to convert to Islam or die.

Yazidi are ethnically Kurds, but follow a pre-Islamic
faith with links to Zoroastrianism. Of the 500,000 Yazidi in Iraq, more
than 200,000 have been displaced or killed since the rise of ISIS,
according to the United Nations.

Ten days after the seige began, Kurdish forces backed
by U.S. air strikes drove the jihadists off the mountain, but not
before the Yazidi community was devastated and scattered. Ahmed and his
brother wound up in an ISIS education camp, where they and as many as
1,500 other Yazidi children were beaten, starved, forced to memorize the
Koran and taught to kill.

“It wasn’t a school, it was like a prison,” Ahmed
said. “We were forced to prayer, we were told we were jihadists and we
were not Yazidi anymore.”

The children were awakened before sunrise for morning
prayers, and fed scraps they washed down with contaminated water that
left them ill, Ahmed said. Yazidi girls were taken away each day to be
sold to ISIS fighters, Ahmed said, recalling one mother’s desperate plea
for mercy on her young daughter.
“The mom cried that her little girl was too young and
she didn’t know anything about marriage or sex, but they didn’t care
and took her anyway,” Ahmed said.

Young women with little brothers told their captors
the boys were their sons in the hope that it would make them less
desirable, he said. If a virginity test conducted by an ISIS doctor
proved them wrong, they were beaten for lying, Ahmed said.

“The girls were covering their faces with dirt,
trying to make themselves less beautiful,” Ahmed said. “But if they were
caught doing that they were beaten. They were all beaten and taken
away. ISIS beat us too.”

After one month, Ahmed and his brother were moved to a
jihadist military training camp closer to Mosul where Koran
memorization was enforced with severe punishment. Boys were trained day
and night in the use of guns, hand-to-hand combat and learned to fight
in close quarters, said Ahmed, who acknowledged witnessing numerous
murders by ISIS’ cruel instructors.

Yazidi boys were told they were being groomed to take
their place on the frontline to fight the Kurds, as well as their own
people, said Ahmed, who knew he and his brother had to escape.

Eight months into his ordeal, the boys got permission
to visit a relative in Tal Afar, he said. Soon after they arrived, ISIS
enforcers there mounted a crackdown, rounding up men and boys in a
monstrous replay of the scene on Mount Sinjar. In the frenzied
confusion, the boys hid under the rubble of a damaged building mosque
until night fell and danger passed, Ahmed said.

In the morning, they began their arduous quest across
some 50 miles of desert to return to their mountain home, Ahmed said.
The boy recounted how he and his brother waited for hours outside an
ISIS base until its occupants went inside a mosque for prayers, then
darted into a building to fill their water bottles.

“We knew we would die without water,” Ahmed said.
“We were so thirsty we drank it all and walked again until we found a
small stream to fill them up again.”

They never made it to Mount Sinjar, but they did find
a Kurdish-controlled village where locals were all-too familiar with
their plight. They called representatives of a Kurdish Regional
Government agency called the Office of Kidnapped Affairs. The boys
waited for the final leg of their deliverance.

“We stayed quiet and still until it was dark, we
couldn’t walk anymore. We were starving,” Ahmed said, his voice a
whisper. “Relatives came in the car to get us. Nobody knew before that
we had been trying to escape.”

Since that day, Ahmed and his brother have been
reunited with their mother and sister in the camp, where the boys
support their family working in a store and attend school in a makeshift
classroom.

Of an estimated 5,000 Yazidi captured in the ISIS
assault on Mount Sinjar, about a third have escaped, been ransomed or
smuggled to freedom. Perhaps most troubling to this fractured and
misunderstood community is the prospect that some of its sons and
brothers have been brainwashed and turned against their own people.

In Ahmed’s case, eight months of dark indoctrination
has not shaken his sense of right and wrong. Instead of anger, he feels
only sad resignation and a wistful longing for a life that may be gone
forever.
“I want to see my Dad again,” he said. “I want to go
back to Sinjar and I want to live peacefully with all my community – all
of us – safe and together again.”

“get prepared, be ready … to make it a month of calamity everywhere for nonbelievers.”

Shoppers who were strolling through Tel Aviv’s upscale Sarona Market on Wednesday when they suddenly encountered two (and possibly three) Palestinian Muslims observing Ramadan. The death toll is now four, and as five other people were wounded, it could rise. Ramadan has just begun, and there have already been jihad murders in Bangladesh, Egypt, and Jordan, among others -- and now Israel. There will be many more.Observing Ramadan? Yes. The killers, reportedly Palestinian cousins from Hebron, were performing what they no doubt thought was a pious act: punishing the Jews, about whom the Qur’an says: “You will surely find the most intense of the people in animosity toward the believers to be the Jews…” (5:82) The Qur’an exhorts believers: “Fight them; Allah will punish them by your hands and will disgrace them and give you victory over them and satisfy the breasts of a believing people…” (9:14)Thus in fighting against unbelievers, a Muslim becomes an executor of the divine wrath. It was against this backdrop that Islamic State spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani recently called on Muslims to use this Ramadan to “get prepared, be ready … to make it a month of calamity everywhere for nonbelievers.” Ramadan is the perfect time for a “month of calamity everywhere for nonbelievers” because it is the time during which Muslims are supposed to be redoubling their piety and increasing their devotion to Allah. What better way for a Muslim to increase his devotion to Allah than by allowing Allah to use him to punish “the most intense of the people in animosity toward the believers”?The nonbelievers upon whom al-Adnani and others like him want to bring calamity include, above all, Jews, as a jihad group emphasized in its own Ramadan message four years ago: “The month of Ramadan is a month of holy war and death for Allah. It is a month for fighting the enemies of Allah and God’s messenger, the Jews and their American facilitators. One of our groups aided by Allah managed to bomb a bus full of Jewish tourists, plunderers of holy lands, after careful tracking. The holy war is not confined to a particular arena and we shall fight the Jews and the Americans until they leave the land of Islam.”

In keeping with the character of the murders as an act of Islamic piety, some eyewitnesses noted that the killers were disguised as ultra-Orthodox Jews. A hadith depicts Muhammad saying: “War is deceit,” and so deceiving unbelievers in wartime is a pious act just as killing them is, and deceiving them in order to kill them is best of all.It came as no surprise, therefore, that Palestinian jihad groups were thrilled with the mass murder of innocent Israelis shopping. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh tweeted: “Glory and salutations to the Hebronites,” along with a victory emoji. Hamas also tweeted out a cartoon depicting the shooting as a Ramadan treat, a bullet encased in sweet dough. Fatah was less openly gleeful but still blamed Israel for the murders, tweeting: “Israel is reaping the repercussions of choosing violence against the Palestinian people.”In reality, the Israelis are reaping the repercussions of living in close proximity to a people who believe that Jews are the children of apes and pigs (Qur’an 2:63-65; 5:59-60; 7:166), thus accursed for disobeying Allah’s express commands. Israel is reaping the repercussions of being neighbors of a people who believe that Allah has put the Jews “under humiliation wherever they are overtaken” (Qur’an 3:112). Israel is reaping the bitter repercussions of living among a people who believe they have a divine command to “drive them out from where they drove you out” (Qur’an 2:191): as Palestinian propaganda tirelessly repeats the false claim that the Palestinians were forcibly expelled from Israel when the modern Jewish state was created, the Palestinian jihad to destroy Israel utterly takes on the character of the fulfillment of the will of Allah.Mainstream analysts consistently dismiss the idea that these Qur’an verses, and many others that excoriate and demonize Jews, have anything to do with the contemporary conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. But as many Muslims worldwide read the entire Qur’an during Ramadan, it is useful to reflect upon the fact that this means that the Muslim book’s many anti-Semitic passages are being newly recalled by multitudes.Jihad groups routinely and unanimously couch their appeals and justifications in Qur’anic terms. The jihad murders in Tel Aviv Wednesday are a grim reminder of the fact that the Qur’an directs so much vitriol against the Jews that blood is bound to be spilled over it – especially during Ramadan.Brace yourself: there are 25 days to go.

Robert SpencerSource: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/263140/muslims-observe-ramadan-tel-aviv-robert-spencer Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Thursday, June 9, 2016

The fact is that these terrorist were declared missing by the PA a day
ago. One would assume that the word of their disappearance did not reach
the ears of the GSS and the Military Intelligence who are usually
coordinated with their counterparts in Ramallah.

Two terrorists, dressed in white button-down shirts, ties and black
pants, both from Yatta village in southern Mount Hebron, entered a
restaurant near the Sarona Market in Tel Aviv on Wednesday and ordered
food, then took out Karl Gustav sub-machine guns and started shooting at
people seated inside the restaurant.
As a result, in one of the most harrowing shooting attacks in the
current wave of Palestinian terror, at least 3 Israelis were murdered
and 4 fighting for their lives in the Ichilov Hospital operating rooms.
Two more are slightly and moderately wounded.
One of the terrorists was killed and the other wounded and transferred to a hospital.
Tel Aviv District Police chief Chico Edry said that there is currently
no information regarding more terrorists, and called for the residents
of Tel Aviv to return to normal. This call, other than the attempt to
reassure, is of no great value, because just as Commander Edry had no
prior information on the shooting attack, he has no information on what
is going to happen in the next hours and days.
Commander Edry also exposes the fact that Israeli security forces did
not detect the news running through the social networks since Wednesday
morning, claiming that an armed terrorist squad has reached Tel Aviv
with the intent to carry out a terror attack.
The fact is that these terrorist were declared missing by the PA a day
ago. One would assume that the word of their disappearance did not reach
the ears of the GSS and the Military Intelligence who are usually
coordinated with their counterparts in Ramallah.
There is no doubt that this attack was well planned for a long time.
The terrorists were armed with two Karl Gustav sub-machine guns,
cartridges and knives. It appears they had excellent preliminary
intelligence: The Sarona Market has countless entrances and exits and in
fact it is impossible to check those entering or leaving the compound.
The proximity to the Defense Ministry and to the IDF Headquarters, the
two most secure Israeli facilities, located in the Kirya in Tel Aviv,
makes the compound a target of terrorist attacks. With these attacks the
Palestinians wish to demonstrate that they can reach these facilities
and the surrounding area.
Undoubtedly, there was someone who armed the terrorists, instructed them
how to load the weapons, manipulate jams and change cartridges, and how
to choose the seating at the restaurant from which they observed the
victims prior to the attack.
The fact that the terrorists split and then opened fire on two fronts
slightly apart, indicates that someone trained them on a method that
will produce the maximum number of Israeli casualties. Their intention
was to escape after the attack in two different directions, while sowing
panic among the general public in the area.debkaFileSource: http://www.debka.com/article/25467/4-dead-in-a-shooting-attack-in-Tel-Aviv Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.